The article “Do business records management affect business growth?” by Mintah et al. (2022) was published in PLOS ONE which is a journal indexed by Clarivate Analytics (SCIE/IF 2022: 3.7), Scopus (Q1), PubMed Central, DOAJ etc. The analysis of this article shows that this journal would virtually publish anything full of scientific, methodological, and structural blunders. It seems that the journal doesn’t exercise peer review to maintain quality research output or apply nescient or relaxed peer review. Don't forget that PLOS ONE charges USD 2290 to publish this kind of blunder.

This manuscript needed an overall makeover to address grammatical and typographical errors that can be seen throughout the manuscript. It is clear that neither the Authors nor the publishing journal focused on producing grammatically correct and error-free paper.

While reading the “Introduction” section, one can easily detect that no endeavor had been made to identify the research gap by mentioning the problem statement and proposing the research question(s) this study addressed. We cannot find anywhere in the Introduction section what was the need to conduct this research and what theoretical or empirical gaps this research intends to fill?

Let’s explore the Literature Review!

“Business records management training” has been placed as an independent variable (IV) in 3 hypotheses statements (see Hypothesis 1, 2, 3 on page 7). Unfortunately, this IV had not been reported in the Literature Review. Numerically, the word “business records management training” doesn’t appear anywhere in the whole literature review, whereas the word “training” only appears once. We wonder how the relationship of Business records management training (IV) with business records management policies (DV), business records management (DV), and business growth (DV) was established in Hypothesis 1, 2, 3?

Now we mention a matter of great surprise pertaining to this study! Once you look at six (6) hypotheses (p. 7, 8, 9) and match them with the results as given in Table 4 (p. 14), you can easily conclude that first the data were tested and based on the results of the data, the hypotheses were proposed. Initially, we got this point by observing anomalies in Hypothesis 3, and 5. Both hypotheses were designed differently from the rest of the hypotheses. Both hypotheses report insignificant association between IVs and DV, while rest of the hypotheses state the relationship in affirmative. Our observation was certified once we read the last line of the last para of the literature review which states “After testing the hypotheses, the following observations were established” (p. 7). This statement affirms our objection that first the Authors tested the data and then state the hypotheses, which are not hypotheses but “observations” as stated by the Authors.

We wonder what study protocols the Authors followed in which they first tested the data and on the basis of data results, they proposed hypotheses/observations. This is not an acceptable way to conduct empirical studies. In empirical studies, first, hypotheses are proposed and then they are proved/disproved on the basis of the results of data analysis. We wonder why the Editors and Reviewers failed to identify and address this unscientific research method. How did this manuscript pass the desk and peer review? We can surely believe that this manuscript was not effectively reviewed and handled by the Editors of this journal.

On page 10, the Authors mentioned an econometric model stating “The following is the general shape of our empirical model…”, we have observed that the model only explains hypotheses 3, 5, and 6. Strangely, separate econometric models were not reported for hypotheses 1, 2, and 4.

Let’s analyze the psychometrics properties of this study. On page 10 (section Modeling, methodological framework, and data), we learn that the study applied a survey method to conduct this study because the Authors mention: “This is an exploratory research work that used the survey approach”. This study tested four (4) variables but, unfortunately, the article was accepted by the Editors and Reviewers, and published by the Publisher without any information on how the variables were tapped? From where the measurement scales were sourced? Were the measurement scales adopted, adapted, or created? What was the response format used to tap the response? What were the sample items? In addition, we cannot find anything about how common method variance (CMV) and non-response bias (NRB) were tackled?

We wonder why Editors and Reviews overlooked such important information pertaining to psychometrics. We believe, any serious journal applying real quality control would never publish an article without properly incorporating study’s psychometrics. These mistakes are clear instances of nescient or relaxed peer review conducted by PLOS ONE.

Surprisingly, on page 14-15, the Authors reported mediation analysis results in Table 5. We wonder that in the Literature Review, mediational relations had not been hypothesized at all. In the Methods section, the regression equation for mediational relationships had not been reported. We wonder, in the absence of any support for mediational relationships, the Authors tested 5 mediation hypotheses. This is very strange for us, but we definitely learn that PLOS ONE will publish anything you will submit. There is no quality control at all.

We strongly believe, this manuscript should be retracted because issuing a simple corrigendum notice could not handle such stern blunders made by the Authors, Editors, and Reviewers.

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